Triblog

!!!!!*****WORKING DRAFT*****!!!!!

Visiting Mike in Colorado, and creating his 21st birthday card shifted my internal compass. In January and February, as I tentatively explored what being with another man might feel like, my own future had become my True North. Dreams of independence crystallized, as I sought active engagement with the problems of the world, and a life devoted to helping young children and their families. Then ten days with Mike, together in that safe and happy isolation we so easily fell into, spun the needle wildly. I felt his pull, the pull of us once more, and poured that through my pen into an accompanying letter.

“…We are just so good together, Mike, you raise me up. We can’t keep it up, not across the country, not forever. But for now, I want to be us again. Are you coming back, to get your diploma? Let me know…”

He called the night after the lifts closed, Patriots’ Day, a holiday only in Massachusetts. I’d hung out at Wellesley, along with Leslie and Marcia, trying to persuade the college girls there not to be so flirty with all the runners trotting by in the marathon. In the end, we got in the spirit ourselves, handing out water cups and cheering the lean asthenic men as they tortured uphill through the campus.

“Janie?” he rasped. “I don’t feel so good. Last night, I had to sit in front of the window, just shivering and sweating. I put on my sister’s cheerleader cape, that didn’t do any good. It’s back again. I wish you were here, make me better.”

“They said a flu’s been going around. You must have caught it. When are you coming back?”

“I’ll be home the end of this week…” He stopped, coughed, caught his breath, and weakly, went on, “…end of the week, get the car fixed up, then drive out to W first week in May.”

We both stayed quiet for a while. I was feeling, He should be here, I could have him here with me. I was thinking, That’s not a good idea, he’ll have nothing to do, I’ll have to study, I might get sucked into his world again, the one I needed to escape.

His breathing sounded heavy, labored, as if even a whisper would be too much. I said, “They’re talking about another strike here, on the 15th. The Moratorium against the war wants to shut down every campus in the country, do it every month until Nixon finally gets us out.” Still I hesitated, until, finally, my heart won the struggle with my mind. I asked, “Are you coming back to get your diploma? You said something about trying to get a job in LA.”

Weakly, Mike replied, “They didn’t have anything, not for someone in college, Maybe later, when I’m actually in school there.”

“So are you going to come back here, or not?”

“Yeah,” was all he could manage before a coughing fit overcame him, followed by the sound of shivering, a susurration through his lips and teeth.

Deep in my head, I heard a voice urging, Don’t do it! But instead, I said, “You could stay up here with me, in May, then go down to W for Commencement.” I wondered why that came out. I went on, “We can be us, together, one more time. I don’t know how long, I don’t know about the summer, but I’m better with you than without you, especially now, it’s getting scary, and I have to…” I stopped, feeling my own body start to shiver.

“OK…OK, I’ll do that. Thanks. See you then. Have fun.”

A week later, Howard and Bev were sitting by her little black and white TV when I came in the apartment.

“God-damn him!” Howard cursed. Seeing my startled look, he announced, “Cambodia! The evil bastard’s now bombing Cambodia!”

“I thought he said he was going to end it,” I asked rhetorically.

“No way he gets away with this. We have to shut the country down!” he almost hollered.

All weekend, students gathered spontaneously in the yard. On Sunday, we marched to the Square, then across the river, joining throngs from MIT, Boston University, everywhere, it seemed. Thousands of us, drawing in shoppers along the way, overflowed the sidewalks onto Commonwealth, finally spilling through the Garden into the Commons. People talked of another march down in Washington the next week.

The day, classes still disrupted, it seemed the entire Harvard community – workers, students, faculty, even  the administration – broiled in anger. Early in the afternoon, word began to filter within the crowd, that National Guardsmen had killed some kids at Kent State. Since I was from Ohio, everyone assumed I knew all about the place. I’d never heard of it before.

The deaths had a chilling effect. I sat with Jeanne, Marcia, and Bev that evening, numb in front of the TV. We talked about the march to Washington.

“Are you going this time, Janie?” Jeanne asked. “You went before, last fall.”

I shook my head. “That did a lot of good, now, didn’t it?” I said sarcastically. “Besides, Mike’s coming this Thursday.”

“What!” Bev erupted. “I thought that was over! What are you thinking, letting him come back here?”

“I’m not thinking,” I admitted. “For one thing, he’s got nowhere to go.”

“And…?”

“And, yeah, I don’t see why I can’t enjoy him, while I still can.”

“You think that’s fair to him?” Jeanne questioned.

“He doesn’t seem to mind,” I responded quietly.

Three days later, there he was, with a little blue Dodge Dart now, still with bucket seats. “Not as snazzy as my Lancer,” he noted. That Friday was the last day of classes, with the two-week reading period to follow. If I kept my grades where they were, I had a good chance of ending up the next year Magna cum Laude, which, as my mother might say, would look good on my resumé.  My frenzied studies, and Mike’s apparent dislocation after six months of nomadic life, had us both walking on eggshells around each other in the cramped apartment. After about ten days of this, with Mike out on his usual one hour afternoon walk to “get some air”, I sneaked a look at his journal, finding the latest entry, Monday, May 18, 1970:

…Before coming back here to Janie, my letters to her, which of necessity are much more sketchy and less organized than this trash, skipped around from politics to weather, to Janie, and me, and so on. What occupies me now? This is not intended to be a repository of day dreams, or might have beens, or punctured romantic illusions. What it can be, and should do for me, is become the permanent remains of past and immediate concerns and events surrounding us.

Although the present moment doesn’t really qualify as a vantage point, or lend itself to stopping the action and replaying it, some scenes in slow motion, others skipped entirely. Rather, Now is like the middle of the sudden drop on a roller coaster – I know that ahead lies a manageable, spine-tingling, fun and frantic ride, and I’ll love it all when it’s over. But at the moment, my heart is two feet above my head, my stomach’s inside out, and total blackout is much preferred to continuation of the ride.

Janie lies asleep now, resting on her bed. She sleeps a lot lately; whether from lethargy or actual exhaustion, I don’t know. A bit of both I’m sure. But I don’t wake her up anymore. In her mind, I have disorganized her enough up to now, and I should just leave her alone when she wants it. She is so ambiguous in her feelings about me. I brought her to Aspen from Denver, and we were very glad to be together, glad to sleep and rest, and nest next to her body. And we walked and skied, and cooked, and sulked, and loved. And led our quiet, almost silent life together. I didn’t try then, but now I do, try to talk to, with, at, about her, and to have fun, to make at least some moments enjoyable. We still like it when each other smiles.

I want her with me, but all of our past has at last taught me how to accept the tyranny of our individual wishes for and paths of independence. She must finish here, I must become a doctor in Los Angeles. What would the summer have done for us anyway? Our plans would have prolonged the period of waiting. I can still imagine us spending our lives together, once everything about us is settled. She loves me, and I love her, and that’s the type of affection, respect and secret longing that will never really have an end.

I, as usual, am far more willing to accept our present cramped living quarters, not to be oppressed by our continual time together. Or is this only a long, protracted weekend?…

This was followed by a birthday poem

Sarah

and your hair;

Your footprints trace a glowing moment in my memory.

Lightly stepping, traipsing through a sweetened patch of 

city,

your ears close out the hurried sounds,

as you smell and dream the river.

At last you’re living twenty-one,

    at last we mark

the region of the clock that goes around

    at first

then sweeps back again.

You stop, track back, and try to live each year as different

from the rest.

One year

is all you’ve known me, one year

is all you ever will.

Each year, in time, becomes the last,

is drowned in past, 

      always only one before.

They all emerge as one, these years,

and you know two;

        the one you live

and the one you’ve left, as

All your years have gone before.

But Sarah – 

        Janie – 

Don’t forget to live within the years you’ve lived before,

the years I’ve given, taken love, 

  and

Grown

with you,

    to grow again.

I hear you say (I say to me)

“My life is lived from me – I’m the one who celebrates

Today.”

But celebrate with me, 

as I celebrate my life

with you,

    no matter how you hurt me.

5-11-70

********

!!!!!*****WORKING DRAFT*****!!!!!

Friday, the traditional end of a ski week, found us taking the Big Burn lift all the way to the top of the mountain. It was my graduation day, when I would finally stretch my wings away from the easier green slopes, and try a blue run, Upper Powderhorn. The Burn lift took 15 minutes, featuring foot rests with an arm bar for the air-starved and weary. the late March Colorado sun beat harshly on the snow, quickly melting its surface, frozen from last night’s cold. There is a magic moment, mid-morning to noon, before the softness turns to slush. Or, as Mike asserted, “Before the corn turns to mashed potatoes.”

During the week, I had quashed my fears, and found a hidden confidence following Mike’s directions. Advancing from a snowplow to a stem turn, I tried to keep my skis locked together, the way he did. Lingering anxiety, however, held me in a three-point stance.

“It doesn’t matter how you look, as long as you’re having fun,” Mike insisted whenever I complained.

“But I want to do this with you, share your skiing!”

“I’ve been here, what, forty, fifty days now? And I can just barely go down a black diamond without feeling like a klutz. It’s not easy, it takes time. Let’s have fun where we can.” He turned around, craned his neck, then leaned back towards me. “Behind us, right behind us, that’s where our house is, across the valley!”

The higher we went, the brighter the sun, the sharper the shadows and shorter the trees. Alpine peaks came into view as we crested the final ridge. Sliding off the chair, we headed right, easing to a stop near tree-line. Three thousand feet below, a V-shaped valley separated us from a higher mountain. Seen from his house, it caught the morning light, a shadow quickly descending across its face signifying the new day’s start. Up here, almost close enough to touch, it dominated our vision, challenging my perception of proportion.

Upper Powderhorn proved easier than I’d feared. Cut towards the left while the slope fell off to the right, I could ski mostly on my stronger right leg. At the bottom, the trail forked left, to Lower Powderhorn, gentle yet uncrowded as far as I could see. Max Park meandered down from the right, filled with nervous skiers, many slower and more awkward than I imagined myself to be. I pointed left, “Can we go there?”

He tapped the black diamond twice with his ski pole, saying, “Too hard for me – it ends up in a gully, then something called ‘Belly-Grabber Pitch.’ Let’s go this way, Max Park.”

Mike seemed so confident, composed, in control, as he skied with me I couldn’t imagine him hesitant with shaky legs, the way I felt on skis. We tried a few more “blues” on the lower slopes. At noon, Mike suggested, “Should we quit? I’ve got to be at Guido’s by 2:30 today.”

I didn’t want to leave, not when I was just beginning to get my ski legs. I knew I’d miss these easy days, without professors droning on or papers to write, no friends challenging my every move. I needed to capture this sanctuary, this hidden time we both had shared, keep it in a snow globe, ready to be shaken any time I felt bereft. Mike left, off to peel potatoes and zucchini, fill the Hobart with tray after tray of half-empty plates, scour pots and pans, and (his favorite) make desserts. I scrounged through Jack and G’s cabinets, finally finding a few blank pages in a notebook, some magazines, glue, and scissors.

Sitting at the writing table, glancing up to watch the alpenglow fade slowly across the Divide, showering Mt. Elbert with bright pink, than faded purple, and finally greying shadow, I slowly, methodically, built a collage. First, from Ski Magazine, I extracted a face shot of America’s current ski hero, Billy Kidd. Next, feeling like a kidnapper creating a ransom note, I cut out and then pasted individual letters and numbers spelling out “21 – I Love yoU – MiKe”, and pasted them across his face. Above that, an ad for skis produced “being happy…” which went above his lanky blond hair. I stuffed this into the inner pocket of my suitcase, intending to finish Mike’s 21st birthday card at home. Then I took a post card of Aspen Mountain and wrote to my parents, sharing my wonder at the mountain beauty, the massive piles of snow on Loveland Pass, and assuring them the searing sun had not burned me.

On the flight back to Cincinnati, I took a window seat, marveling at how Kansas was even flatter seen from the air as driving through it. Once home, I took out the collage, and set to work adding a final remembrance. I meticulously covered the entire surface of a 5 inch by 8 inch piece of construction paper with any and everything that popped into my mind about Mike and I at the present moment.

In the upper left corner, I started with a palm tree, then mouse ears and balloons. Below that “Disneyland” with a little mine train chugging up a miniature hill. To the east, “Los Angeles”, the sun surrounded by swirls of smog, and, for emphasis, the word itself repeated three times. Across one side, the geography of his future  – and our recent – life: “Colorado – Aspen – Snowmass – Los Angeles – Cincinnati?

Given my tiny handwriting, I had lots of space left. Next, a rendition of his W letter sweater, surrounded by other icons of the sport: Molly, names from his little kids’ team, teammates and coach from college, and “Katy Winters”. A maze, leading from “Psychiatrist” to “Doctor” to “Medical School” to “Why”, until, finally, at the center, “Shrink”. Across the bottom, “Loving Beauty To Love Lovely Love. I dredged up Jason Robards’ line from 1,000 Clowns, “Why weren’t you born a chair?”. Above that, hints from three songs: “Let it be”, “Like a bird on the wire, I have tried to be free ~ “ and “Sooner or Later, one of us must know that I really did try to get close to you”.

At the top, an homage to our ski week: “Schuss-boomer”, “Chair lifts”, “Snowplow”. His now dead car,  Judy Be Good, and a reminder to “Fasten Seat Belts”. In the middle, Mt. Albert, 14,431’

I grabbed some crayons, putting in a topsy turvy rendition of the Birthday Song, ending “Happy Birthday Dearest Mike, Happy Birthday To You.” I placed random green (his favorite color) squiggles, added a few orange ones near Los Angeles, and discovered there was still room for a few more tokens. Random words and phrases came to mind: “The only way to grow is to grow together”, Learning, Sharing, Outside, Inside, Love, “together apart”, “apart together”, Trying, Love, the first lines to our high school Alma Mater, and in the few remaining spaces, “Mountains and Oceans”, “Oceans and Mountains” repeated several times. 

I pasted it on the brown paper with Billy Kidd, and found a blank spot waiting to be filled. I grabbed the postcard to my parents, the one with Aspen Mountain on the front, cut off the sides with pinking shears, and glued it down.

Finally, at the top, middle and bottom, I wrote, “Happy Birthday Mike – I Love You Very Much – Sarah Jane”, “Happy Birthday to Mike”, and, finally, “May It Be a Good 21”, his age underlined six times. Pleased with my handiwork, I leaned back, grabbed my father’s 35 mm camera, and took a snapshot, before sealing it in a manilla envelope, doubly stamped for West Village, Colorado.

********

!!!!!*****WORKING DRAFT*****!!!!!

Mike was waiting for me as I walked off the plane into Stapleton airport. Once again the mile-high air in Denver had me breathless, almost panting, my cheeks flushed. He stood hesitantly, gauging my mood. Then, a soft hint of a smile from him, one raised eyebrow, and I remembered my vow after agreeing on the phone to come. Enjoy ourselves, together, now is all that matters for this next week. I smiled back, he hugged me from the side with an extra little squeeze, and we walked down towards baggage claim.

“I almost didn’t get here,” Mike said as he grabbed my suitcase.

“Oh?” was all I could manage, thinking, That’s not much of a start.

“In Glenwood, an hour down the road from Aspen, it was, what, maybe 6 this morning? The speed limit’s 25, no one’s around at all, it’s Saturday morning, so I’m going 40. Cop pulls me over. He said, ‘You’d better have a good excuse for this, when you see the judge,’ as he pulled out his little ticket book.”

“What happened?” I asked.

“I told him the truth, said I was going to pick up my girlfriend in Denver at the airport, I hadn’t seen her in over two months. He smiled, put the book away, then looked stern and shook his finger at me.”

“Well, at least I’m good for something,” I murmured, almost too soft for him to hear.

Mike gave a little laugh, then added, “He said he’s going to be watching for us when I come back through, I’d better be going under the speed limit.”

Jack had been busy over Christmas, as the main room upstairs and our downstairs bedroom were now wood-paneled, hiding that friendly sparkling insulation as we lay in the wide old rosewood bed. No curtains on the windows, which meant an outdoor light show twinkled right outside, more brilliant than any planetarium.

“Is that…the Milky Way?” I marveled.

Mike leaned over, looked out and up, and said, “Yup. It’s unreal here right now. See, no moon, it’s already set behind us. So few houses in this valley, the air so thin, the stars are much brighter here.” He eased back down, resting on his elbow as he brushed my hair back across the pillow. “Your face…your hair…I just remembered how much I like to look at them.” With a smiling open mouth and closing eyes, he nuzzled down into my neck,  then my face, my lips, finally drawing back to say, “And your smell, I’ve missed that smell.” With that, we fully fell together, enacting once again the dance we’d rehearsed so many times before.

By the time he crawled upstairs, I’d been awake two hours. “East coast time, you know,” I said, answering his puzzled look. He’d always been the early riser in our couple, me the night owl. I felt a step ahead of him for once. Finding the coffee, making pancakes for him, even, I saw how easy falling into domesticity might be. My anxiety increased when I remembered, today we were going skiing.

He’d already dressed in blue jeans and that sweater I’d given him the year before. We quickly found some long underwear of G’s which fit me, covered that with one of her fluffy sweaters and those jeans Eddie bought me in Chicago. My long down parka and dark green watch cap completed the alpine ensemble. Rental skis and boots were next, then out to try my luck.

“OK, watch these people getting on,” Mike instructed as we waited by the chair lift. It seemed to whip around the bull wheel impossibly fast, but then was grabbed by an attendant who held it for the next pair to ease down on a wooden seat. “You stand there, put your poles in one hand, turn back and grab the pole with the other. Then, sit down. Watch a couple more.”

I tried to reassure myself by thinking, even if I don’t spend my life with Mike, if I never ski with him again, knowing how to get up and down a mountain will be a good skill to learn. Broaden my horizons, and all that. When it was our turn, Mike went first, then I quickly followed. Turning toward the center, he let me grab the pole first, then reached above my hand as we both sat down. He threw his right arm out to hold me back, and off we went. Three minutes to the top of this baby lift – “Fanny Hill”, they called it – during which he repeated over and over, “At the top, lean forward just a little, stand up, and let yourself slide forward. Do not walk, keep you feet and legs together.”

I did all that, and safely made it off. But he’d neglected the little part about stopping. When I found myself still sliding, not knowing what to do, I simply fell down. He walked over, reaching down to pull me up.

I shook him away. Irritated, I said, “I’ll do it myself, all right?” But of course I couldn’t, not with those six-foot long planks on my feet getting in the way. I let him help me up, then dutifully followed his instructions about “making a ‘V’, a snowplow, then weight on that uphill ski  as you let yourself slide down and around.”

Amazed when it worked, I zig-zagged all the way down that bunny slope, not falling once and turned back into the line of waiting skiers, ready to go again.

Mike hockey-stopped right above me, spraying snow nearly to my face, shook his head in disbelief, then said, “See, I told you you’d like it.”

Each day, we came back out, in the sun, in the snow, and kept that yo-yo rhythm, first ride up, then slide down. On the second day, I graduated to a longer lift, half way up the lower part of the mountain, the part we couldn’t see from his house, and discovered “Wipe-out Hill”, which certainly deserved its nickname. After our third time down, my blue jeans were caked with freezing snow, rapidly growing stiff and crackly. Mike noticed, and suggested we go inside, to thaw out and rest a bit.

“But first, let me stop in at the post office, see if there’s any mail.” He deposited me by a cozy fire in the Timber Mill, where I could warm up and look out at the other beginning skiers trying to stay upright.

He returned, frowning, waving several envelopes across his face.

“I heard that each week, the medical schools send out a list of everyone they’ve accepted to all the other schools. That way, supposedly, they know who’s in and who’s not, and unless they really, really want someone, they can feel better knowing someone they reject, but think is good enough, will have a place somewhere else.”

I had my doubts, it seemed this story might be apocryphal, designed to make the applicants feel better about being rejected over and over. After all, hadn’t Mike already gotten into two schools?

The letters that day, in their thin envelopes, told us he wasn’t going to Harvard or Colorado. Columbia, Michigan, St. Louis and Yale soon followed. By the time San Francisco, Stanford, and Washington came through, we’d gotten used to the idea Mike would be headed to Los Angeles next fall. “About as far as you can get from Boston,” I noted.

Mike had always been the most upbeat person I knew, able to find a silver lining in the darkest news. He speculated, “If I’ve got to be inside 8, 10 hours a day in class, then study, it’s good to know that when I do get out, it’ll be sunny, the weather will be nice. Oh, and maybe I should write to the admissions director, see if I can get a summer job there.” He never mentioned the yawning continental chasm opening up between us. He knew, he finally knew, our days on Martha’s Vineyard, weekend drives to Cambridge in that little red Lancer, cozy walks along the Charles, all that was gone forever. I stayed silent, too.

********

!!!!!*****WORKING DRAFT*****!!!!!

Next morning, an hour or so after he had left to drive back home, Mike called. “It’s the car. It just stopped.”

“Where are you?”

“At a gas station, near the Pru.” He sounded resigned, confused.

“What are you going to do? Come back here? How would you get home? Can you get the car fixed?”

“I called my dad. When I told him the mechanic said it would cost a couple thousand to fix, and they offered me $500 for it as is, he said, ‘Just leave it there. Fly home.’ He sounded distracted, like my mother’s thing has taken all his energy, his ability to make plans about anything else. So I’m taking the train to Logan now.”

“You’re just going to leave the car here, abandon it? You love that car, Mike. How can you just let it go like that?”

I heard a deep sigh, and could almost see him with his eyes closed, his mouth screwed up. Finally, “No, I’m sad. Mad. Angry. I don’t know what. I don’t want to leave it behind…but I’ve got to get back, go to Aspen. What am I supposed to do?”

“Are you still planning on coming back in January?”

“For a week or ten days, to hand in papers and take a couple of exams. Hopefully, I’ll get another car, so I can still go out to Snowmass, find a job there, live in the house, figure out how to ski.”

Apparently, nothing was going to deter him from this path he’d charted. A goulash of anger, fear, sadness, and, finally, hope, swept through me. I wondered, would I ever get my heart back? Instead of sharing this, I laughed and said, “Well, see you next year!”

Three weeks later, he returned, all excited about the paper he’d written for his Film Studies class.

“It’s about using the documentary form in otherwise fictional movies. Like Easy Rider, where they show Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper wandering through the the actual Mardi Gras, interacting with strangers.”

I remembered a darker example. “Medium Cool.  I hope you used that. I was there, remember. I saw Haskell Wexler on the other side of the fence where they’d trapped us. You may have seen one thing when we saw that last month, but I kept looking for me and Eddie in the background.”

“Yes, I put that in there. Not about you, but the technique, I mean.”

“What about Aspen? Did you find a job there?”

“I’m gonna be a dishwasher! I think I got the job a little bit ‘cause of swimming,” he exclaimed.

“Swimming? What’s that got to do with skiing?” I asked, although in my mind, they were one and the same thing – silly sports which had entrapped an otherwise ambitious man.

“It’s at ‘Guido’s Swiss Inn.’ See, he came over after the war. He has these Old World attitudes, got a sign in his window, ‘Hippies and longhairs not allowed.’ I walk in with my head nearly shaved for swimming, I guess maybe he thinks I’m OK.”

“But you’re not, are you? I mean, we don’t like the war, we want to think for ourselves, not be told how to act, right?”

“Never trust anyone over thirty, yup, that’s me. But dishwashing’s great. Start work after 3 PM, so I can ski most days. I bought a season pass, at the student rate.”

February and March, I gave in to several Harvard boys who wanted the cachet, or maybe the ease, of a date with a ‘Cliffie. I found it was easy to spot someone in class who might have his eye on me, then turn a brief conversation about homework into an offer of a movie, or even dinner. As with Howard, though, I didn’t feel a spark from any of them, no hidden electricity as I had with Michael Harrison.

After another depressing night out I returned to 119 Walker, and found Bev, Jeanne, and Marcia still up, sharing a bottle of wine and stories of their own romantic woes.

Marcia was saying, “…is he the man I want to have a family with? He’s got some growing up to do.”

“They all do,” I found myself saying acerbically.

Bev’s raised eyebrows urged me on. I said, “This guy tonight, he must have thought getting me into bed was the way to a lasting friendship.”

“Did you?” questioned Jeanne, offering, then withdrawing her glass. “Oh, wait, that’s right, you still don’t drink.”

“Sometimes I wish I could, or should, or…I don’t know!” Exasperated, I reached for the Chardonnay. One sip, and I knew why I didn’t like it. I put it down, disgustedly. “Yuck. No, I think I must be a serial monogamist.”

“Meaning?” Bev questioned.

“Meaning, I still love that boy…”

“Mike,” Jeanne added.

“Mike,” I went on. “I’ll always love him, I just don’t know if I’ll love the man he’s becoming. Like you said, ‘He’s got some growing up to do.’ ”

“What, his quitting school?” Marcia chimed in.

“No, that’s actually a sign of maturity to me, wanting to get out into the real world. No, there’s this girl he met last summer, they’ve been writing letters every month or so.”

“So it’s OK for him, but not for you?” Jeanne asked incredulously.

“It’s not like that, really. I think, or at least he says. She’s still in high school. The way he talks about it, she’s got a crush on him, and he enjoys that. Nothing more.”

“And you believe him?” Bev put in.

“One thing I’ve learned about Michael, he’s such a Boy Scout, he can’t help but tell the truth. Yes, I believe him. He’s so juvenile about the whole thing, though.”

Marcia wondered, “What is it about that guy that keeps you coming back to him?”

I tried to explain. “His mind, we have such an…affinity with each other. I love our talks, he makes everything we do an exploration, an entrancing story. I don’t know why, but I want to, I’m always doing little things for him. Like making that sweater, cooking a Boston Cream pie for him, his favorite. And the birthday cards I write for him. Maybe that seems submissive, but it works both ways, he’s always doing stuff for me, writing me poems, getting me presents, keeping me safe. He makes me feel…lovable, I’m somebody who can be loved. I’ve never felt that from anybody else, outside my family. It’s hard, so hard to let that go.” I paused, feeling that strange flush start up my neck.

“And…?” Marcia prodded.

“And…OK, there’s our time in bed. Sex. It’s a mystery to me, so simple, so strong. I want to be a free and independent woman, not depend on any man. But, damn, that feels so good sometimes. To trust somebody that completely, to be loved in return.”

Silence enveloped us.

Mike called the next morning. “I think I’ve finally got it, I’m finally getting somewhere.”

He meant skiing, of course. He gushed over the smell, the feel, the chill, the softness of the snow. How he could now turn with his feet together, down the steepest slopes. I understood his excitement, but had no clue how that actually might feel, inside his body. Maybe that’s why, when he said, “You’ve got to come out here, spring break, see what it’s like in the winter, try skiing. I know you’ll love it!” I agreed.

“That’s great. I’m having fun, but it would be so much better with you.” A brief silence then, “Oh, I almost forgot, I got into another med school!”

“Where?” I asked in a monotone. I almost didn’t want to know. What if it were Boston, or New York?

“LA. USC. California.” He sounded so chipper. “If I end up there, maybe I’ll try and get a job in their psych clinic this summer, no more kids’ swim teams.”

!!!!!*****WORKING DRAFT*****!!!!!

Chanukah started the following Friday. Jeanne brought out her menorah, and for the first time, I had a family in Cambridge to share the holiday with. Howard showed up with Rachel, Marcia invited her boyfriend, even Bev joined in, giggling at the unfamiliar ritual candle lighting. I sheepishly brought out my childhood dreidel, still occupying place of pride on my desk, and everyone give it a few spins. Best of all, Eddie and his family came up from Providence, and Mike arrived mid-party, carrying a gift-wrapped record album.

“Last time I was here, I noticed you guys didn’t have this one yet,” he said as I unwrapped the Beatles’ Abbey Road.

Bev grabbed it, saying, “Great! We’ve needed this,” as she tore off the cellophane and slipped out the disc. We now had an upgrade to my suitcase player, a small turntable with built-in radio and separate speakers. Not much power, but enough that we all could hear the opening “Shoop…shoop” as Paul sang, “Here come old flat-top, he come groovin’ up slowly…” Within minutes, Mike’s eyes were closed, as he swayed back and forth, softly singing along with his hero,  John Lennon: “Something in the way she moves, attracts me like no other lover…I don’t want to leave her now, you know I believe and how…You’re asking me will my love grow, I don’t know, I don’t know…” As the final chord faded, he opened his eyes, looking straight at me with a faint, almost questioning smile.

When Paul started the next song’s bouncy beat, Mike said, “Funny, when I first heard this, I kind of identified with it.” Seeing my raised eyebrows, he went on, “You know, ‘Maxwell Edison, studying in medicine…’ But then, he turns out to be a little sociopath, so, no.”

As the last song on the first side began, Eddie produced another album wrapped up for gifting, and presented it to me. “That song, it’s about him and the artist he took up with, Yoko Ono. Maybe we should put this on next, before we hear the other side?”

“Is this the one they wore no clothes for the cover photos, but the record company wouldn’t sell it that way?” I asked.

“Right,” Eddie responded. “Two Virgins. Supposed to represent how we’re all naked and innocent in this world, or something, according to her.”

“She’s kind of weird,” Mike observed, as Yoko warbled, screeching really, while John tape looped all sorts of instruments atonically together.

Eddie leaned conspiratorially over to Mike and asked, while jerking his head first towards Arlene, then towards me, “Would you let your wife do something like that, and try to sell it?” Then, with a full body laugh, he went on, “OK, you guys aren’t ready for this I guess,” as he whisked the record off, replacing it with the second side of Abbey Road.

The upbeat acoustic guitar opened into Paul’s homage to sun worship. “Little darlin’, it’s been a long cold lonely winter…it feels years since it’s been here – here comes the sun…it’s all right…the smiles returning to the faces…it’s all right.” I remembered Mike would soon be leaving school for good, first over Christmas to Snowmass with his family, then after a return for reading period, heading back to the mountains, for his ski bum winter.

While George droned on about all the reasons he loved the world, I pulled Mike away, offering him the “Arthur Miller” chair as I sat in my O’Neal. He looked at his, saying, “This is Bev’s? How come she get the Jewish director’s one, and your is the WASP lead?” Over in the corner, Denise picked up one of the little speakers, holding it by her ear as she bobbed with  Paul singing, “Out of college, money spent, see no future, pay no rent…”

Earnestly, I took his hands, and asked, “You’re sure that’s what you’re doing, going to Aspen next month?” As I spoke, I noticed a sense of relief, a hope he’d say, “Yes”, so I could finally say, “No” to him. I was a bit shocked to realize I relished prospect of him not being around, not showing up every week or two, enticing me with his alluring sense of fun and warm, soothing skin.

Head nodding up and down, he flipped Eddie’s present over and over, finally saying with a little grin, “Two Virgins? That was us, right?”

“Mike, that’s one thing we will always have, will never go away.” He looked confused, so I went on. “We lost our virginity together, buddy. That will always be special to me, that it was you, and you for me.” As I spoke, my stomach tightened, as if trying to grab my heart, keep it close inside.

Ringo began intensely drumming as Paul and John harmonized over George’s driving chords, “Oh yeah, all right, oh, you gonna be in my dreams tonight…love you, love you” the last repeated over and over until, finally, “And in the end, the love you take, is equal to the love you make.”

The room hushed for half a minute, then Paul well and truly finished the record with a little ditty about “Her Majesty”, “Some day I’m gonna make her mine.”

Mike turned to Eddie and asked, “I heard that’s their last album, they’re breaking up.”

“No!” Bev shrieked. “There’s supposed to be another one, right?”

“Well, yes…and no. We will hear from them again, supposedly, but it’s stuff they’ve already done, they did before this one. Nope, Yoko took him away, I think. No more Beatles.”

Mike looked back at me, saying, “It’s time, Janie, it’s time. I know I have to do this, to have this empty time. Two months, three months, six months, maybe even nine months in front of me, I see them totally unfilled. I’m not apprehensive, though, or expectant about it. For the first time, I’m not worried what new school it will be in the fall, it’ll be somewhere good, I’m sure. I’m really not worried about anything.”

The next day, Saturday, the day before he was supposed to leave for home, I went over to William James Hall to study. Overhead, the regular rotary sound of fan blades brought a calm and quieting force into the fluorescent-lit lightly filled study room. One would think, at the end of the semester, this place would be much more crowded, but less than half the chairs were occupied, most of the students looking at books, taking notes, preparing for exams or papers. I found a nook in the balcony, looking down on one side at the stacks and tables below, on the other at the dark, chilly, windy night outside. The quiet lack of intensity reassured me. For the first time in quite a while, I was without that constant, gnawing sense of urgency which drove me every day. In here, we had much to do, and lots of time to do it in.

********

!!!!!*****WORKING DRAFT*****!!!!!

Mike arrived in Cambridge the Friday after the Moratorium march, looking completely drained. “My father called this morning, I’m going back to Cincinnati tomorrow evening.”

“Wait, What? You have to go back now? Can’t you wait until Thanksgiving?” 

He slouched down in the director’s chair Bev had appropriated from the movie shoot on the second floor, the one with “Ryan O’Neal” boldly silk screened on the back rest. “It’s my mother. She found a lump under her tongue, got it biopsied on Monday. It’s cancer, some kind of skin cancer.”

“Oh my God! What’s going to happen? Not G! That’s…that’s…I don’t know, it’s scary.” I plopped down on my bed, wondering if I should reach out and stroke his leg. He looked numb.

“Surgery. She’s having surgery first thing Monday. My father wants me there, he thinks I should be there.”

“Shelly?”

“She just drove out to Idaho with her friend. She’s going to live in Sun Valley, at least this winter. There’s a guy there…”

I interrupted, “What kind of surgery, where? Oh, Mike, I hope she’s going to be all right!”

“Christ Hospital. He said they have to cut off part of her tongue, make a skin flap from her neck to rebuild the floor of her mouth, dissect the lymph nodes. She’ll have to learn how to talk again, he says.”

My mind whirred with anxiety. G had been a calming, encouraging force for me the past three years, a beacon for what I could become. The thought of her brought low like this at the start of her career as a clinical psychologist, unmoored me. I shunted that worry aside, knowing Mike needed support, not fear, from me.

“My mother’s strong, she’s the strongest person I know. She says she will not be stopped by this, she has grandchildren to harass.” He sniffed, shook his head with a half-hearted smile.

Two weeks later, Mike drove back up. I met him on the porch, saying, “We have to be quiet, they came back for some re-takes up there. Take your shoes off when on the stairs.”

“Are they here, now?”

“Just the crew, they’re trying to get the lighting right I think. We’ll be gone when they start filming.”

I showed him the book review James had written about Anais Nin’s latest diary installment, Volume III, 1939-1944. “She’s speaking tonight, after they show a Henry Miller documentary. “We’ve got to go, I have to see her, to hear her.” I bubbled with excitement, forgetting to ask about his mother. “Listen to what he wrote, ‘After a terse notation of atrocities (“Bali invaded. Java invaded. Paris bombarded by the English, India rebelling against the English”) Nin wrote: “And what can one do but preserve some semblance of human life, to seek the not-savage, not-barbaric forms of life.” I’ve been reading her stuff ever since that class with Shulmeister last year. She’s so smart, so willful, doing what she wants, holds her own with men.”

Mike, distracted, nodded, “Sure.” Then, “What about after? I need to get some sleep tonight.”

I’d forgotten about the MIT swim meet tomorrow. Somehow he had cajoled the coach into letting him drive up by himself, not on the team bus. “I told him I was a senior, wasn’t coming back after January, what difference did it make. And that I had to see my girlfriend, could stay with her. I guess he thinks I’m a lost cause anyway, so why not?” He looked a bit sheepish as he said this.

Suddenly, I remembered his mother, her surgery. “Anything new about G? How’s she doing.”

“She looked pretty weak when I left, that neck tube thing is…weird. She gets it taken out in two weeks. Then my father wants to take her with us out to Snowmass for Christmas. Doctor said she had to wait six weeks before she could ‘resume’ her normal activities. It’ll only be four or five when we drive out. J insisted she had to go, said he would carry her everywhere if he had to.”

“Sounds like he needs her as much as she needs him,” I mused.

Nin looked smaller than I’d imagined. With her braided hair curled high in back, she exuded an intriguing air of prim, elegant sensuality. We arrived just as The Henry Miller Odyssey began screening, and had to stand in the back of the overflowing crowd of students. Afterwards, asked about publishing her private diaries now, she replied, “ I felt there was an affinity , a connection between the thirties and the sixties, and that the past can often inform the present.” She sounded suspicious of dogma as a solution for one’s problems, saying “Self-knowledge and self discipline result in freedom.”

In response to a question about her role as a woman in the salons of the thirties, surrounded by Henry Miller, Lawrence Durrell, and Otto Rank, she asserted, “Women must be every bit as independent as men. In their art, in their life. You know, we do have sexual feelings apart from love. I like the Dionysian movement, it’s a recognition of expression through the senses and the joyfulness of relationships.”

Energized by seeing her, hearing her speak of women’s freedom to choose and direct our lives, our loves, our futures, I took control of Mike that night in bed. At first reluctant, perhaps remembering his swim meet the next day, he soon caught the spirit, coming back for a second, slower coupling. Finally we slept, huddled close in my narrow bed, but I soon found him on top of me, waking me up once more with undiminished fervor. Exhausted, we both slept until the winter’s sun weakly sparkled through the naked branches outside my window. We shared a smile, wordlessly shaking our heads in satisfaction, which led to one final effort, in which we both succeeded.

“I hope you can still swim today. Don’t you have to get at least a third place for you letter this year?”

“Haven’t you read about what opera singers do before a performance?”

“I haven’t, but I can imagine.” I felt fulfilled and free, knowing I was in control of me, at last. 

********

!!!!!*****WORKING DRAFT*****!!!!!

Howard insisted on driving back to Boston. “This car is on its last legs, it’s got all these little quirks, I think I’m the only one who can keep it going.” After he’d drifted across the freeway again, almost hitting a delivery truck this time, Rachel, sitting next to him, said, “Enough! You haven’t slept more than two hours the past two nights. Time to let someone else take over. Come on, let’s trade places with Jane and Mike, you can fall asleep in the back.”

Howard, eyes drooping, reluctantly pulled over, took out the keys, and started to hand them to Mike. I looked down at the three pedals up front, and asked, “Uh, Mike, do you know how to drive a stick?” He said nothing, so I went on, “You’re always telling me how to drive, and you don’t even know how to shift gears manually?” I glared at him. “All those summers with Eddie’s VW, remember? Give me the keys.” He made a big show of dropping them into my outstretched hand, looking ready to loose a smart aleck remark. “Don’t even think about it, buddy. Watch and learn for once, OK?”

He must have thought being in the shotgun seat gave him free license to pontificate. “Remember I told you, when I was eight, I decided that scientists’ technological advances were spiraling out of control?”

“Uh-huh,” I nodded.

“…doubling at an exponential rate, and the end of 1969 was the tipping point? Well, here we are, I think. The apocalypse has arrived.”

“Isn’t that a little melodramatic? It was just people marching, almost like a giant picnic.”

“No, listen, it’s not just the march. It’s everything. Hippies, do your own thing. Landing on the moon. Johnson passing all those civil rights laws, women getting more and more respect. I read even the earth is getting its own day next year, people are starting to care about how we’re messing things up with dams and cars and nuclear plants and stuff.”

“OK, but an apocalypse?” I laughed, “Like Hair? ‘The dawning of the Age of Aquarius’? This better be good…”

He cleared his throat. “An apocalypse is an outside event which forces us to re-orient our lives in relation to its sheer existence. Sure, there can be minor apocalypses, natural disasters like a flood, a tornado, hurricanes, and earthquake, which have an effect for a limited time on the limited few to whom it occurs. President Kennedy’s death had an apocalyptic tinge, as did, in a juvenile sort of way, the advent of the Beatles, and later, Bob Dylan. World War Two was a more galvanizing, more complete apocalypse, though time-limited. And of course, there is the archetypal one in western civilization, which all of the last two millennia stems from, the Jesus story.”

“So how do you know this is the time for something thing like Jesus, or the war. I still think you’re making too big a deal out of all this.” I worried about concentrating on the road, while I absorbed this sudden epiphany he shared. I wished he’d just take a nap, even if it meant he started snoring in unison with Howard in the back. Poor Rachel.

“Well, I’ve been looking for the signs, and in this decade we’ve had many. JFK heralding our generation as the one which will face a great assault on freedom – it’s ironic that assault is coming from within the very structure he was trying to reform. Nixon resurrected, a creep like Agnew elected – all this reflects a dissatisfaction with life in general. Everyone feels it. The middle class has an undefined awareness that the course of the country is not consistent with what they were told it should be. The radicals and drop-outs express a more conscious dissatisfaction with a life they see themselves being thrust into. This march, this weekend, showed me that all of this dissatisfaction, all of the establishment repression, all of this idealism, is coalescing into a clash which will be played out in our adult lifetimes. By 1980, I bet, all the strategic timetables for corporations and government will be out the window. It is the dawn of a new age, and we saw the first recruits here in DC. For every ten of us going back to our colleges, there are a hundred in the high schools, a thousand in the nursery schools, to whom resistance will become a matter of course.”

He sounded so earnest, so idealistic, I couldn’t help getting into the spirit. “I think I get it. In 30, 40, maybe 50 years, we’ll have a complete, sudden – at least in historical terms – turn-about to some new, as yet unknown society? And we have to act, to live with this in mind, that we can’t know, much less control, what the major forces in our future will be.”

“But you can shape the course your responses will take…”

Totally caught up in it now, I jumped right in. “I’m going to be a psychologist. If what you say is true, the future will be more and more uncertain, more people will feel unmoored. They’ll need help in setting their own directions. I can help them do that.”

“How?”

“I don’t know that yet. Personal therapy, encounter groups, psychodrama, love – it’s all possible, all useful.” The freedom of the unknown seemed a guiding beacon now. “I accept it, going through the looking glass, not knowing what’s on the other side. It gives me hope my life will have some meaning.”

Back home at Oxford Street, Bev met me with a surprise as I walked up the porch steps. She pointed to the second floor bay window. “Some guys came here yesterday, said they were movie scouts. Wanted to look inside, asked if the rooms below were still for rent. The landlord wasn’t around, so I showed them in.”

“So?”

“So-ooo, they want to film a movie here.”

“A movie? A real movie, like Hollywood and everything?”

“Yeah, it’s about a couple of kids who meet at Harvard, and they need a ‘starving student’ apartment for a few scenes. Both outside and inside. Said this place was perfect.”

“That’s us, starving students…Jeanne and Marcia both here?”

“Upstairs. How did it go in DC, with Howard and Mike? Was that weird.”

“Not at all, maybe because Rachel was distracting him. And Mike was just so much more…Mike this weekend. First, he really got into the march, the idea of resistance, of change. He wanted to see and do everything, he even looked the part for once.”

“And…?”

“And, he reminded me just how much, exactly why I love and need him.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning, he’s my friend and lover, Bev, and I just have to admit it, have to accept it. Even if it all ends, I love being with him, talking with him, cuddling with him, looking at him, and I’m going to enjoy that, take advantage of it while I can.”

!!!!!*****WORKING DRAFT*****!!!!!

During October, 1969, I felt calmer, more sedate. The campus had settled down, everyone back to work it seemed. The Faculty finally voted to condemn the war. Bev,  Jeanne, and  I found a domestic rhythm at 119 Oxford Street. Mike came to Cambridge nearly every weekend, while I went down to Connecticut once, to his plush four-man suite complete with individual rooms, spacious living room, and kitchen. We kept our talk focused on the present, nothing about where, or when our individual futures might diverge. Our biggest worry was whether to cut our hair. Swim season started November 1, so Mike was planning on getting shorn.

“More hydrodynamic,” he insisted. “Maybe you should try it.”

“Have you forgotten how big my head is, buddy? I’d look like that mascot on the baseball team back home, what’s his name?”

“Mr. Red. Besides, wouldn’t it be easier to take care of?”

“Right, him. I complain about it, but I’m secretly proud of my hair. And I know you like it, too.”

“The first thing I noticed about you.”

“Your hands, my hair. If nothing else, we’ve always got that.”

Early in November, at another Hillel meeting, I ran into Howard.

“Janie! “ He didn’t seem the least bit anxious about how we’d parted. In fact, he had a girl on his arm. “This is Rachel.” They seemed attached, almost affectionate. I knew Rachel, another Radcliffe junior. We each said, “Hi” demurely.

Then, remembering she ostensibly had a boyfriend, James, I said, somewhat obliquely, “Oh, I saw James had a poem published in the New Yorker. Pretty amazing for him, right?”

Not rattled at all, she admitted, “Big deal, for sure. We’re all so proud of him.”

Howard, oblivious to all this, piped up, “Look, we’re going down to DC next week, the Moratorium. Do you want to come? You and Mike, maybe?”

I frowned, remembering Chicago the summer before, and Uni Hall that spring. Howard said reassuringly, “This is going to be big. They have all the permits, they’re so many of us, they don’t want to have any trouble. Gene McCarthy, McGovern, Peter, Paul, and Mary. Pete Seeger. Even Charles Goodell. They can’t put us all in jail, can they?”

“How are you getting there?”

“My old Volvo station wagon. We’ve got room. There’s five of us so far, you and Mike can have the back all to your selves.”

“The back” meant that, while Howard drove all night, we spent six hours, huddling, cuddling really, in a space meant for several suit cases.

We piled out somewhere in the middle of the city. Howard, as usual, knew somebody who would let us all sleep that night on their floor. In anticipation of the chaos, I had first covered my hair with a stylish blue bandana, a thick knit watch cap over that. Mike wore blue jeans, a work shirt, wire rim glasses, and a fit-for-the-occasion vintage leather jacket, faded tan sporting authentic signs of wear and tear.

“That is some jacket, Mike,” Howard observed.

“My father says he bought it at a fire sale in Omaha 1938, when he started going out with my mom. Gave it to me last year.” Switching gears, he said, “Are we going to do anything before the march?”

“Like what?” Howard came back.

“Well, I’d like to see Kennedy’s grave, the Eternal Flame.”

“That’s kind of far away, across the river. We’ve really got to head over to the Monument now, all these people, it’ll take forever to get anywhere. How about we do that tomorrow, on our way home?”

We’d landed on the edge of all the consulates and diplomatic residences. All around us, a sea of people moved forward, aiming towards the Washington Monument. The streets were free of traffic, the entire downtown must have been cordoned off to accommodate us all.

Howard swept his arms around. “Look, it’s not just kids, it’s everybody!” Men in suits, women with prim handbags, permed hair and hats held down with pins, children in strollers, even young men in wheel chairs. Many carried signs, not of protest, but of expectation. To the left, passing a muted Tudor house, I saw inside a group of grey-haired men and women gathered around a sign, as if discussing how best to emphasize the message. It read “The silent majority speaks!” Laughing, I pointed at them, asking Mike, “Are they going to crash this party? What are they thinking?”

“Maybe they’re opposed to the war, too, and want to let Nixon, Agnew, Mitchell, all of them, know that even Republicans, even the establishment, wants out, now.”

The crowd moved as one down Constitution Avenue, moving slower and slower the closer we got to the monuments. A few exhausted marchers sat at the curb. Police lined the route, officiously resplendent in their long, double-breasted blue coats. No guns, no shields, no horses or armored wagons in sight. Instead of helmets, they wore peaked caps with narrow plastic brims. Whenever I looked at them, they smiled and waved back.

I felt hopeful that a peaceful march was possible, that it was no longer us against them, but simply us, finally, all of us. A sense of unity, of positive change coursed through my mind.

Mike was asking Howard, “What happened to the Young Turk, man? Looks like no more turmoil, just a peaceful protest today.”

Howard shot back, “All these people, like they suddenly woke up. ‘Oh! We’re aware now! Let’s change things!’ Well, I don’t buy it. All this energy, all these people, it’ll fade away, like it always has before.”

At some point near the towering obelisk, we simply came to a stop, along with everyone else. Although we were more than a mile from the podiums at the Lincoln Memorial,  the massive speakers were powerful enough to reach us up on our little hill. We cheered lustily when Eugene McCarthy was introduced, as he thanked us for what we’d done the year before, ending the Johnson reign. He told us we could do the same with Nixon, when it came to the war. Peter, Paul, and Mary led us in a sing-along of “Blowin’ in the Wind.” Mike had brought a 35 mm Pentax camera, taking candid pictures of the scene. I snuck it away from him, hoping to do the same for him.

Somewhere far in front, the mass started swaying. A wave of raised arms surged towards us, not fists today, but the “V” peace sign. The crowd around us caught the movement, and finally I heard a mumble, then a distinct repeated chant, singing actually. “All we are saying, is give peace a chance.” Over and over, not to be denied. I snapped Mike’s picture, head back, his face beatific, his hair, still long at my insistence, golden against that ragged jacket.

!!!!!*****WORKING DRAFT*****!!!!!

“What did you think?” Howard asked as we walked out of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

He had been so eager to see the film, even though I’d seen it before, I couldn’t deny him, not on our first official date. All I could think about was the scene with Butch, Paul Newman, riding Etta Place around on a bicycle while her real boyfriend, the Sundance Kid, lay sleeping in her cabin, recovering from their relentless pursuers. “The bicycle was kind of fun,” I offered.

“Bicycle?”
“Sure, when he rides around to that song, Raindrops Falling On My Head, then pushes it away and says, what is it, ‘You can have the future’.”

He seemed puzzled. It hit me: that perky schoolteacher, arms around another man, seeing the past, the faithful horse give way to a new-fangled machine. Howard was friendly, smiling, but I vaguely wondered if he might lead me to dead end somewhere like La Paz. I had to re-direct our attention.

“After law school, you have plans?”

Howard hesitated, then revealed, “I’ve been going to a few meetings at Hillel, where they talk about Israel. First, I think, after I pass the boards, I’ll go there, see what a kibbutz is like for a few months,. Then come back, go back to the Free Clinic.”

Seeing my own puzzled look, he explained, “I’ve been been volunteering there last spring and summer. They need so much help fighting landlords, employers. No one will help them, no real lawyers, I mean. All anybody wants to know is how much money is in it for them. We could get a whole network going, provide them with a fighting chance.”

As he walked me back to Oxford Street, I scrunched up against the evening chill. He tentatively tried an arm around my shoulder, gave a squeeze, asking, “Maybe I can warm you up?” My silence and tense reaction stopped him short as he pulled away, saying, “Here you are,” Questioning with his eyes, he asked “Plans for this weekend?” 

With Michael Harrison arriving the next morning, a strong surge of honesty made me say, “Mike’s coming up. We’re going down to Martha’s Vineyard for the weekend.”

Howard’s face lost all animation. He didn’t frown, simply went blank. “Oh,” was all he said. I walked inside, feeling defeated.

I heard Mike’s Lancer a block away, now in need of a new muffler. I hurried downstairs with my bag to meet him outside. I didn’t want to risk Jeanne or Bev [mentioning/saying] anything about my evening with Howard. Seeing me, Mike’s grin grew even broader as he waved an envelope overhead. “First one!” he shouted.

“First what?”

“Cincinnati. I got into UC med school!”

“You don’t really want to go there, do you?” I asked, genuinely worried he might say yes.

“Of course not! Why would I want to go back there? But now I don’t have to worry I won’t get in anywhere. It really is a relief, to know they want me. I mean, I only sent in the application two weeks ago. That’s a good sign, isn’t it?”

That simple acceptance, the reassurance his future was assured, gave Mike a boost the whole way down the coast. “For the first time – I guess I haven’t told you this, but I’ve been worried I wouldn’t get in anywhere – for the first time, I can think about the future. I don’t know where I’m going next fall, not yet. But it’ll be somewhere good, I’m sure.”

As we drove along, passing hardwood trees with the first hint of color change in their leaves, the placid bay gently shimmering in the mid-day sun, I reflected on Jeanne’s idea of companionship.

“Mike? What do you think it means, to be a companion?”

“What, like somebody who helps out an old person in a retirement home?”

“No, as a stage in a relationship. You know, two people can be lovers, they can be friends. But they can do that without being…together. Without living together.”

“Hmm…you mean, sleeping together is easier than living together?”

I hadn’t thought of it that way, that making love is not permanent. The act never lasts very long, although the memory might. Out loud, I said, “Making a home, a life; that lasts a lot longer than just a night in bed.”

I could see him smiling a bit sheepishly as he stared dutifully at the road ahead. Sucking air through his lips and teeth, he struggled to say, “Kids, though. Sleeping together, in the end, that’s all about kids, that’s where it all comes from. And kids, that’s about as permanent as it gets, I think.” He sighed again, this time through his nose.

“What?” I demanded.

“I’m just thinking about the little kids, the ones I coach, the eight-and-unders. I mean, I don’t want to spend my life doing that, but I do know I want a family, want to have little kids, who grow into bigger ones, then people. That feels so right, so true, what I’m supposed to do, what I want to do.”

“Kids? How many, like a lot?”

“What’s ‘a lot’?”

I had never thought of my family as too big. For no reason, I said, “Six or seven. That would be too many.”

“Three of four, no more. But more than two. Fifty percent more fun, with just one more…”

Next morning, in a little Edgartown hotel room, we awoke to the familiar clanging of cables against masts on the boats in the marina below our window. After breakfast, we rented bikes and moseyed along the northern coast road, headed for our favorite spots near Menemsha. It was late on a sunny Sunday morning, and a gaggle of youngsters in their church clothes pedaled madly by us, free for at least a half a day. As they whizzed by, Mike stopped, got off and leaned against his bike. Bending down, he pulled a long, drying blade of grass, pale as straw, from a patch near a wooden fence post. He stuck it in his mouth, wiggling it up and down, staring north at the glassy waters of the sound.

He pulled it out, pointing at the bikers disappearing quickly up ahead. He cleared his throat for one of his poetic pronouncements. “Kids. They’re ultimate expression of the permanence and value of the universe. An unmeltable glue between the two folks who make one.”

!!!!!*****WORKING DRAFT*****!!!!!

Back in Cambridge, I found myself pulled back to Hillel. In the year since I’d attended the worship and study congregation with Les, Rabbi Gold had added two or three meetings every day, where reading from the Torah was not on the agenda. Women’s participation in weekly services, book discussions on works by Bellow and Roth, study groups on Harvard’s role in the community, and anti-war advocacy were analyzed and discussed in fevered fine detail. In late September, at a meeting discussing the impending vote by Harvard’s Faculty to condemn the war, Howard Lehrman plopped down next to me.

“I thought you were afraid of admitting to your roots, Janie.”

“Howard! Hi!” I wondered why he’d changed his tune about my name. His insistence on it in the spring had started me thinking, maybe a switch to Sarah would be be the right signifier when I turned 21. “You know how I like to argue and discuss. I feel comfortable here. Maybe these are my people, after all. Anything that’s lasted so long must have something going for it, no? I’d like to learn what that is, since it’s a part of me. Find out what that power is, I mean.”

Walking through the Divinity School on the way to Oxford Street, Howard fell in step with me. His hair seemed neater, his clothes less flamboyant. “How’s the second year in law school?” I asked.

“A lot of work. Reading, writing, arguing in my study group.”

“What about the SDS – they still fired up?”

“Not so much here anymore. It looks like being against the war is now the norm on campus, and everyone, after the strike, is on the workers’ side. But I am going to Washington next month.”
“Washington? What’s that?”

“Another march, to show Nixon he’s got to end it. We may not like the man, but he’s in charge, so he is the key to finally getting us out. And then there’s the draft lottery. Law school won’t protect me, not like college did the last four years. I’m worried about that.”

“Draft lottery?” I felt like a grind, studying so much I didn’t know the simplest things about what was going on in the world.

“Oh, yeah, you’re not a guy. December 1st, they’re going to pull ping-pong balls out of a machine or something, like a Bingo game. 366 numbers, assign each one to a date, then draft people based on that. I’m trying not to think about it.”

“Bummer”

“Yeah, bummer.”

We arrived at the steps up to 119. The vacant lot next door had gone to seed, patchy clumps of dying grass and weeds reminding me I was not in Clifton, or the manicured Radcliffe quad anymore. Howard asked, “Say, you want to go see a movie this weekend?”

Mike was coming up for the first time that fall on Saturday, for an overnight weekend at Martha’s Vineyard. Without thinking, I replied, “Friday night OK?”

Trudging up three flights to our apartment, I walked in on what appeared to be a witches’ coven. Jeanne and Bev, both dressed in black, hovered over a steaming pot on the stained and weary stove.

“What’s cooking?” I asked.

“Toil and trouble,” came the reply from Bev. “How was Hillel?”

“Fine. The Faculty’s going to vote in a couple of weeks, whether to formally object to government policy on the war, asking them to end it. We’re supposed to ‘engage’ with our professors, get a feel for where they stand.”

“Mmm,” Bev hummed, nodding her head once while sniffing the simmering brew.

Jeanne looked up, smiling, and said, “I saw Howard Lehrman with you down there.”

I felt myself flush a little, below my collar bones. Before it could reach my neck, I turned away, dropped my bag, and said quickly, “Yeah he was there.”

“Anything new?”

“We decided to go see a movie tomorrow night.”

Bev and Jeanne both froze, then turned towards me as I sat on the threadbare couch installed underneath the bay window.

“So what’s up? I thought Mike was coming up this weekend, you were going to the Vineyard?” Bev queried.

I frowned and sighed, saying, “Yeah, I’m not sure what I’m thinking.” I stopped, trying to put my feelings into words. “It’s like, with Mike, the newness of us has gotten old. I feel like I haven’t lived, like I don’t know how to handle life and other people.” I remembered talking with my mother, with Mike’s mom G, about their relationships. I decided I trusted Bev and Jeanne enough by now, so I plowed on. “What is love, anyway? I get so confused, thinking about it with Mike.”

“Oh, ‘love’. That’s a tough one, isn’t it? What do you see, when he’s on your mind? How did it all start, and grow?” Bev tried.

I went back to the start, with them telling how I first thought he had the hands of a doer, not just a thinker. And now I saw him hiking, skiing, swimming, and wondered If I could do all that with him. “And then it gets all jumbled with his body, not just his mind.We write these letters, he woos me with his words. But also his body. I see him, I feel him, and those words go out the window, it’s just about touch and warmth and…”

“And sleeping together,” said Bev.

“Yes, and that. Call it what you want, it feels right and good, but I don’t know if that is love. What is love?” I repeated.

Bev tried again. “It’s like art, isn’t it? I know it when I see it. It’s so obvious to me that you two are in love. He idolizes you, and you fawn over him like you’ve lost your mind.”

Now I felt even more embarrassed. The last thing I wanted, the last thing I needed, was to lose my mind, my ability to think clearly, to read and write and learn. I knew Bev was right. I knew I loved Mike, that was the start of our relationship. “I guess you’re right, yes, I do love him, I’ve always loved him and that’s what confuses me.”

“Do you ever say no to him? You’ve got to say no to him, if you want to get him to act like you want towards you.”

I thought about this during an uncomfortable silence. I saw Jeanne slightly frowning, as if her analytic mind were whirring like a slot machine. “I can’t when we’re together.” Another scary hesitation. “The attraction when we’re together is so strong, we have so much fun together.”

Bev sighed. “Then it sounds like the only way to say no to him is to not have him around at all.” That made me almost shiver with fear.

Jeanne was ready to speak. “Here’s what I think, Janie. You started out feeling love for him, when you were, what, sixteen? Then you two became friends, all those walks and talks, those letters you’re always writing. At some point, your two created a new component, went from kissing to hugging to sleeping together, the whole sex thing. And now, last summer, you tried out being companions, on that long trip after you saw me in St. Louis. I think maybe that’s the next step, you have to learn how to be, see if you can be, companions. Companionable. Maybe that’s the next step in your relationship.”